I write and speak about technology's impact on business and life in books, for Forbes and occasionally for business. I'm author of five books including Age of Context and Naked Conversations and am currently researching a book with the working title of The We Economy: How Technology Gives Everyone a Better Shot. Pitch me by email: ShelIsrael1@gmail.com.

Scott Monty Leaves Ford: What it Means to Social Media

Scott Monty is leaving Ford Motors after six years as head of its social media group. This is a great loss for Ford, in my view. It also heightens my growing fears about how big brands will handle social media in the coming years.

Like me, Monty has long been a champion of using social media to humanize large organizations by scaling conversations and ultimately building and reinforcing brand trust.

This is in direct conflict with traditional marketing’s approach of treating social media tools as new arrows in the old outbound marketing quiver. To that line of thinking, brands can use blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as online message delivery mechanisms: Shoot millions of them up into the air and, as they fall, they’re bound to hit somebody, or so the current thinking goes.

But a half-dozen years ago, traditional markers eschewed social media. It was hard to measure; it could backfire and you’d wind up with people saying bad things about you on your own digital properties; the blog audience was comprised mostly of unwashed masses, not the more elite readers of newspapers and viewers of commercial TV. Those of us who argued that dialogue was more effective than monolog in building trust were considered disruptive—and perhaps unsavory– elements.

Monty has been one of the poster children of making the modern brand—even entrenched, iconic brands like Ford—more conversational, personal and transparent. Along with other social media pioneers who injected this new thinking into other big brands, he believes the real power of this new form of communications lies in listening to the views of customers, prospects, partners and competitors.

The belief in the benefits of listening is closely coupled to the thought that the more light that’s shed on an organization’s inner workings, the more that organization will be trusted. The greater the trust, the more loyal the customers become—to the point where they form the core of your external marketing force.

The catch is that for a brand to retain trust, it has to behave in a continuously trustworthy manner. To put a human face on an organization, it has to show humanity with humility, admitting when it has made mistakes. As we do with friends, we tolerate a brand’s little gaffes and fibs—so long as it comes clean.

In the early days of social media, Marketing simply ignored the smattering of employees who started blogging about their jobs on their own time. Then, as social media conversations started rising in numbers and influence, those in control often tried to shut it down. Finally, as the power of social media became clear—and as the dominance of traditional broadcast channels started to wane—Marketing made its move to own social media.

Many of the most successful big-brand social media programs started as tiny skunkworks operations. Small bands of bloggers and social network operatives operating on financial pittances were protected from the morass of organizational approval systems and review processes. Most acted with great speed, presuming it was wiser to ask for forgiveness, rather than permission, Many of them got away with it at least for a while.

Bloggers and those posting on social networks moved with great speed and accomplished amazing things. They gave ears to frustrated customers. They let outsiders understand the innards of large organizations, showing us that, behind the slick graphical representations of the brand, there were real people doing their very best to build products and serve customers. We got to see that those people were just like the rest of us; they wanted to do their jobs well and for the most part, they were ethical.

Social media has humanized some brands over the past half-dozen years. It is a radical step around the traditional branding efforts that would have us believe that entire global organizations shared monolithic thoughts and visions, and walked in lockstep to a monotonous parade march. These social media pioneers revealed the truth of the matter: Companies were made up of people like you and me.

This was a promising shift; research such as the Edelman Trust Barometer shows that people trust people like themselves far more than they trust ad claims, celebrity spokespeople or company executives.

When he started blogging as a mid-level Microsoft employee, Robert Scoble was probably the first to have a big impact at a major brand. At the time, Microsoft was generally viewed with mistrust and hostility. Yet, Scoble was effervescent, with enthusiasm and almost unprecedented candor for a company representative. I know Scoble well and he is among the most human of humans, willing to share his personal flaws more publicly than me or anyone else I know. His style softens perceptions of his employer’s brand.

In 2006, Scoble and I wrote Naked Conversations, which presented an early case for why it was in the interest of modern organizations to join social media conversations.

In the years that followed, armies of social media practitioners have found jobs in the enterprise. No major company today has a go-forward strategy that does not include social media.

But, as social media matures, it’s begun to lose the magic that made it so valuable. What was so recently a proud and independent culture is being swallowed and digested into marketing cultures where that special value is being gelded.

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I don’t think this is the death of anything. Social media has been evolving and will continue to do so. People change jobs. It’s not a sign of anything more than those two things, in my opinion.

The fact remains that social needs to be woven into marketing, communications, customer service and HR – and done so in a non-siloed way – in order to do the things you’ve written about, Shel. That will (or should) continue to evolve over time.

TS Eliot once wrote “Only those who risk going to far, can possibly find out how far one can go. On reflection, I think you are right and my headline went too far. I’ve changed it. I hope you like the new one.

Hey Shel, It sounds like we need to catch up! I would love to share with you the direction that Dell is moving in. The vision was to embed social into the fabric of the company. The people that you mentioned did amazing work and chose to move on with their careers just as Scott has done. I am leading social @Dell and we have a talented team continuing the legacy. Check out our progress on the Dell Social Media Slideshare account. http://www.slideshare.net/dellsocialmedia

I would be happy to set some time up to share what we’re working on. We are bridging the silos that Scott referenced. Michael Dell has a clear vision for us as an IT Solutions company.

Exactly Connie! Social Media is rapidly emerging to become core to a company’s operations and contribute value from many perspectives. It’s moved way past the skunkworks project of yesterday. Brands are enabling Social Media in ways that were unimaginable a few short years ago. And, most importantly, are quickly grasping the resulting ROI which just makes it more pervasive.

With all due respect, Connie, I know for a fact that not all of those people chose to move on. Dell has been going through some tough times as it reorganizes and refocuses – and layoffs are necessary to keep the business healthy – but don’t misrepresent the facts.

Ford isn’t going out of business, just as Intel didn’t go out of business and neither did Comcast. You’re putting too much stock into one employee. Employees, in all positions, leave organizations every day. It’s social media…not the holy grail.

Whatever Scott Monty is pursuing, it’s going to be big. Ford lost a thought leader when he left. As far as the title of his blog post “Driving Into the Sunset”, I doubt that. I can’t wait to find out what company is lucky enough to snatch him up. Social media is far from dead. It’s just hard for large ships to turn. Old brands are less nimble and are struggling with their own mindsets.

Well said, Shel. While I think your outlook is more dour than mine, I can’t deny that there are some signs of a backlash against the transparency that you and people like Scott have espoused. This always happens, though; dictators invariably crack down revolutions shortly before running for the hills. I agree with Scott’s more upbeat view.

In fact I hope that Scott is right. In my book with Porter Gale I will be taking a more hopeful view of blogging’s restoration. I see transparency as a necessary component for the restoration of trust, and I do believe trust need resuscitation. My first book, Naked Conversations started with the words “We live in a time when most people don’t trust large organizations. It seems to me, that blogging lessened that for some organizations some of the time and now that trend is heading south once again. I look forward to seeing evidence of upticks related to social media and large organizations, but that is not how I see it right now. If the discussion that I have helped provoke, starts a conversation that leads elsewhere, I will be happy and will write a retraction to my post here on Forbes. I look forward to seeing the need to do that.

Transparency gains trust and you need this on social media but how much transparency is enough? Let us look at Buffer, they are (until now) 100% transparent but do you think that it could work for brands like Ford, Microsoft, Oracle etc. 100% could cause misunderstanding in many ways in a really complex organization. Maybe this is the reason, that many big brands are still struggling with social media activities. What do you think?